I'm using the Edimax wireless mini USB that used to run perfectly on mint 11 with the rtl8192cu. Now I have mint 13 mate and the connection is problematic. Works sometimes, other times it doesn't. The amount of time I can be connected is random. I have tried everything on this thread, has anyone figured out a solution to this problem. My readouts in the terminal are the same as those on this thread as far as I can tell.

Hi guys, for the record I ended up buying the TP-Link TL-WN822N device. I plugged it in, and it started detecting the network almost immediately.

However, the connection seems very slow. I am wondering whether the previously-installed Realtek drivers may be causing conflicts with the new device? How can I uninstall that driver? I cannot find an obvious method described in the README.

With the new device (and wireless adapters in general), should I try to use the wireless-compat drivers first, or the specific ones for that device?

(If I have any problems with the TP-Link TL-WN822N device, I will ask in a separate thread. Thought it would be most appropriate to post this Realtek driver uninstallation question here.).

That slow connection can be easily fixed - apparently you indeed got a device with Atheros chip. Please post the output of inxi -N, then I know which revision of the device you have and which driver it uses.

edit: just re-read your post. It is not a conflict with realtek drivers, then you would have no driver loaded at all.

Last edited by AlbertP on Wed Apr 03, 2013 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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(I see that the old Realtek USB adaptor is listed as Card-1. Should I do anything to remove it from the list? It is not plugged in anymore, and I am not planning on using it again).
Interesting that Linux is listing the device as 'TL-WN821N v3', instead of TP-Link TL-WN822N v2 - which is what is printed on the box which I bought.

In any case, I see that the wikidevi pages for the devices [1, 2] list the correct driver as ath9k_htc.

I followed your instructions earlier in this thread to install that ath9k_htc driver:
sudo make wlunload

Stoping bluetooth service..
Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8)
utility, e.g. service bluetooth stop
Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an
Upstart job, you may also use the stop(8) utility, e.g. stop bluetooth
bluetooth stop/waiting
Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8)
utility, e.g. service bluetooth status
Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an
Upstart job, you may also use the status(8) utility, e.g. status bluetooth
bluetooth stop/waiting
Unloading bnep...
Unloading rfcomm...

Let me know how these outputs seem to you. Subjectively, the network connection currently seems slower than I thought it would be. (Compared to the 2 other notebook in this room with inbuilt network adaptors.) Would be great to increase the connection speed via AlbertP's trick.

Ok, it says invalid argument when loading some modules. That may be because you installed compat-drivers with a Realtek driver; that somehow makes you unable to load other wifi drivers. You can go to the compat-drivers folder, right-click > Open in Terminal, and run: